Career

Made research assistant, department of veterinary medicine, University of
Nairobi, 1966; joined National Council of Women of Kenya; lecturer, then
assistant professor, then head of the faculty of veterinary medicine,
University of Nairobi, 1970s; chair of veterinary anatomy, 1976; professor
of veterinary anatomy, 1977—; founder and president, Green Belt
Movement (formally Envirocare), 1977—; chair, National Council of
Women of Kenya, 1981-87; Forum for Restoration of Democracy, founder with
others, and member, 1991—; named co-chair for Jubilee 2000 Africa
Campaign, 1998; elected member of parliament; Deputy Minister of the
Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife, Kenyan Parliament,
2002—; named McCluskey Visiting Fellow in Conservation, Yale
University, 2002.

Awards:
Woman of the Year Award, 1983; Better World Society Award, 1986; Windstar
Award for the Environment, 1988; Woman of the Year Award, 1989; Woman of
the World, 1989; Honorary Doctor of

Sidelights

Avisionary environmentalist, Wangari Maathai created a successful
reforestation program that began in Kenya and was adopted in other African
nations and the United States. Maathai continues to
be recognized worldwide for her achievements, although she is denounced
as a traitor and a rebel in her home country.

Maathai (pronounced MATH-eye) is perhaps best known for creating the Green
Belt Movement of Kenya, a program recognized all over the world for
combining community development and reforestation to combat environmental
and poverty issues. Maathai excelled at mobilizing people for a very
simple goal—reforestation—which also impacted poverty and
community development in Kenya. Maathai believed that people needed to
help with environmental issues and should not rely upon the government.
Maathai clashed with the Kenyan government, often at risk to her own life,
when she opposed destructive governmental initiatives and when she forayed
into politics personally.

Maathai was born in Kenya in 1940. Attending college in the United States,
she went on to earn a B.S. from Mount St. Scholastica University, in
Kansas and a M.S. from University of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania. She then
earned a Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi. She was the first woman in
Kenya to earn a Ph.D. and at age 38, she held the first female
professorship (in Animal Science) at the University of Nairobi. She
credited her education with giving her the ability to see the difference
between right and wrong, and with giving her the impetus to be strong.

Maathai's life was not without turmoil and hurdles, which she
described as God-given. She married a politician who unknowingly provided
the basis for her future environmental activities when he ran for office
in 1974 and promised to plant trees in a poor area of the district he
represented. Maathai's husband abandoned her and their three
children later, filing and receiving a divorce on the grounds that she was
"too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too
hard to control," according to the
Mail & Guardian.
Maathai maintained that it was particularly important for African women
to know that they could be strong, and to liberate themselves from fear
and silence.

In 1977 Maathai left her professor position at the University of Nairobi
and founded the Green Belt Movement on World Environment Day by planting
nine trees in her backyard. The Movement grew into a program run by women
with the goal of reforesting Africa and preventing the poverty that
deforestation caused. Deforestation was a significant environmental issue
in Africa and was resulting in the encroachment of desert where forests
had stood.

According to the United Nations in 1989, only nine trees were replanted in
Africa for every 100 trees that were cut down. Not only did deforestation
cause environmental problems such as soil runoff and subsequent water
pollution, but lack of trees near villages meant that villagers had to
walk great distances for firewood. Village livestock also suffered from
not having vegetation to graze on.

Women in the Kenyan villages were the people who first implemented
Maathai's Green Belt Movement. "Women," Maathai
explained at
National Geographic.com,
"are responsible for their children, they cannot sit back, waste
time, and see them starve." The program was carried out with the
women establishing nurseries in their villages, and persuading farmers to
plant the seedlings. The movement paid the women for each tree planted
that lived past three months. Under Maathai's direction in its
first 15 years, the program employed more than 50,000 women and planted
more than 10 million trees. Other African nations adopted similar programs
based on the Green Belt Movement model. Additionally, the government
stepped up its tree planting efforts by 20 times.

The Greenbelt Movement that Maathai conceived was not limited solely to
tree planting. The program worked in concert with the National Council of
Women of Kenya to provide such services and training to Kenyan women and
villages as family planning, nutrition using traditional foods, and
leadership skills to improve the status of the women. By 1997 the Movement
had resulted in the planting of 15 million trees, had spread to 30 African
countries as well as the United States, and had provided income for 80,000
people.

Maathai had strong beliefs about how she carried out environmental
activism. She warned that educated women should avoid becoming an elite,
and instead, should do work for the planet. Nobody could afford to divorce
themselves from the earth, she believed, because all human had to eat and
depend on the soil. Activism, she felt, was most effective when done in
groups rather than alone. She credited her success with the Green Belt
Movement to keeping the goal simple. The program provided a ready answer
for those who asked, "What can I do?" Planting trees, in
this case, was the simple solution.

Maathai continued to oppose modernization that collided with her
environmental beliefs; this often put her at odds with the government. As
an example, she was thrown out of her state office in 1989
when she opposed the construction of a 60-story skyscraper in Uhuru Park
in Nairobi. Maathai claimed that the building, which was to house
government offices and a 24-hour TV station, would cost $200 million. The
money, she claimed, could be better spent addressing serious poverty,
hunger, and education needs in the country. Her opposition succeeded in
frightening off foreign investors and they withdrew their support; the
skyscraper was never built. In Nairobi, Maathai also opposed the
deforestation of 50 acres of land outside the city limits to be used for
growing roses for export.

Politics and environmental activism continued to interweave in
Maathai's life even before she attempted to run for office. In
1991, she helped found the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy, a group
that was opposed to the leadership of then-president Daniel arap Moi. She
advocated for the release of political prisoners and led a hunger strike
on 1992 with the mothers of these prisoners. During one of these protests,
she was beaten by police until she lost consciousness.

In January of 1992 she was arrested for her political protest activities
when more than 100 police raided her Nairobi residence. Later in 1992, she
was charged with spreading rumors that then-president Moi planned to turn
government power over to the military in order to prevent multi-party
elections. While Maathai awaited trial for the latter charge, she was
refused medical treatment in jail; even though she was experiencing
difficulties due to a history of heart problems and arthritis.

In 1992 Maathai was approached to run for the Presidency by a cross
section of the Kenyan population. She declined, preferring to try and
unite the fractured opposition parties against President Moi. Her efforts
failed and Moi was again elected.

In 1997 Maathai responded to encouragement from supporters and friends and
announced that she was running not only for a Parliament seat, but for the
presidency under the Liberal Party of Kenya (LPK) in an attempt to defeat
Moi. She got a late start in the process and did not announce her
intentions until a month before the election. She denounced the current
corruption in the government, and urged that the time had come to restore
Kenyan people's dignity, self respect, and human rights. The
government that she proposed was a people centered operation, or an
"enabling political environment to facilitate development."
Central to her vision was a Kenyan society where people acknowledged their
cultural and spiritual background as they participated in government.

However, Maathai released no party manifesto prior to the election,
claiming that the Green Belt Movement would provide the direction for her
platform. At least one political analyst of the Africa News Service, saw
this as troubling, claiming that Maathai might focus only on environmental
issues and that the LPK already had a manifesto. Maathai countered such
fears by claiming that her leadership would focus not only on the
environment (which was, in her mind, tied to other issues like hunger),
but on infrastructure issues, poverty, disease, and the empowerment of the
oppressed.

Maathai found fault with the current political system, which required
candidates to acquire extremely large amounts of money in order to carry
out campaigns. This situation, she claimed, made it difficult for many
visionary hopefuls like herself to even have a chance at making a
difference in Kenya. A few days prior to the December 1997 election, the
LPK leaders withdrew Maathai's candidacy without notifying her. Her
bid for a Parliament seat was also defeated in the election; she came in
third. Moi again emerged as the presidential victor. She continues to be
admired worldwide, however, for her visionary work in the environmental
arena.

In January of 1999, Wangari was hospitalized for a head wound and
concussion she suffered during a government-arranged attack while she and
some supporters were planting trees in the Karura Public Forest in
Nairobi. The plantings were part of a protest against the land being
approved for clearing and development. She immediately reported the
incident to Amnesty International and other agencies, which publicized it
through the world media as Wangari lay in her hospital bed. Accustomed to
such treatment, however, Wangari has continued her environmental campaign
undaunted.

In 2001, the Green Belt Movement filed suit to prevent a forest clearance
project by the Kenya government that included a plan to clear 69,000
hectares of woodland to house homeless squatters. Maathai believed that it
was the government's deliberate ploy to gain support in the coming
elections. Planet Ark.com reported that she commented, "It's
a matter of life and death for this country, we are extremely worried. The
Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made problem."

Maathai's future plans include another worthy cause: she hopes to
establish a center to house battered women and children. This is an
enormous undertaking that will require a lot of support, education, and
resources. Many African men will need to
be persuaded as they might see this as an intrusion into their culture.
Oftentimes they treat women as personal property, especially among those
who have paid exorbitant amounts of money for the bride price. Successful
programs in Europe and the United States include components for counseling
both the victims and the perpetrators. Many Africans will have to change
their mind-set and treat men who abuse women and children as lawbreakers.
On the other hand, African women should not be content to remain as
victims; they should be aware that they have choices and human rights. Moi
left office in December of 2002, after a constitutional ban prevented him
from seeking reelection.

Maathai was elected a member of parliament and appointed Deputy Minister
of the Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife. Now as she serves as
a lawmaker, she is in a good position to support or enact laws that will
protect women's rights as human rights. She also began an
appointment as the fifth McCluskey Visiting Fellow in Conservation at Yale
University's prestigious Global Institute for Sustainable Forestry,
where she co-taught a course titled "Environment and Livelihoods:
Governance, Donors, and Debt."

Such commitment has earned Maathai many accolades and acclaim. Among the
many prizes and recognitions bestowed upon her is the 1991 Goldman
Environmental Prize, one of the most prestigious in the world. She
received the Edinburgh Medal in 1993, and in 1997, she was elected by
Earth Times
as one of 100 persons in the world who have made a difference in the
field of environmentalism. On March 30, 2004, Maathai won the 2004 Sophie
Prize, founded by Norwegian writers Jostein Gaardner and Siri Dannevig.
The $100,000 award recognized Maathai's work on environmental
issues.

Maathai's name became even more well-known when she was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize, the first ever given to an African woman. She was
honored for aiding democracy and attempting to save Africa's
forests. At the ceremony, Maathai stated, according to CNN.com,
"The environment is very important in the aspects of peace because
when we destroy our resources and our resources become scarce, we fight
over that. I am working to make sure we don't only protect the
environment, we also improve governance." According to the
Mail & Guardian,
the money that goes with the Nobel Peace Prize received a lot of
attention from the Kenyan media. After being asked frequently about what
she planned to do with the money—and giving the standard answer,
about funding environmental programs—Maathai finally declared,
"I could indulge, yes, but how many cups of tea can I
drink?"